


Not Exactly What You Planned

by emilyray (emilyenrose)



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Ghosts, Halloween, Multi, bbot3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-01
Updated: 2008-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 22:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer remembered it like this: they were ten, and they were playing with an old half-deflated soccer ball, and Spencer threw it to Ryan, and Ryan didn't catch it because Ryan couldn't catch and also because Spencer threw it further than he meant to, and the ball went into the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Exactly What You Planned

**Author's Note:**

> Ghostfic for Halloween 2008. Beta thanks to harriet_vane.

Spencer remembered it like this: they were ten, and they were playing with an old half-deflated soccer ball, and Spencer threw it to Ryan, and Ryan didn't catch it because Ryan couldn't catch and also because Spencer threw it further than he meant to, and the ball went into the road.

Ryan ran after it. Spencer saw the car and ran after Ryan.

He didn't remember anything after that. He didn't know if Ryan remembered it differently.

What he did know was that he woke up three days later, after the funeral, standing upright in Ryan's bedroom and staring at Ryan. 'Woke up' wasn't really right: there was no slow blinking, no stretching, no urge to yawn - no urge to breathe at all, actually - just one moment Spencer wasn't there and the next he was. He knew exactly where he was because he'd been to Ryan's house lots of times and they usually stayed in Ryan's room. Ryan had all the GI Joes his dad had bought him dressed in Barbie clothes and lined up by the window where the moonlight was streaming in. And anyway even if he hadn't known he could have guessed, because there was a bed against the wall and Ryan was in it, curled up as small as he could go with his face tucked into the pillow. His shoulders were moving unevenly and his breathing was making little snorting snuffling noises. After a moment Spencer realized Ryan was crying, and felt a horrible kind of helplessness. He ought to go and get someone but he didn't know who to get. Ryan hated it when people saw him crying. He'd be annoyed at Spencer for days.

Spencer couldn't just stand there, though. He walked over to the bed and waited for a second before he touched Ryan's hand, light enough that Ryan could pretend Spencer wasn't there if he liked. "Ry?" he whispered.

Ryan froze at the sound. "Go away," he mumbled into the pillow after a second. "Go away, you're just a dream, go away."

Spencer felt sort of annoyed. "I'm not a dream," he said. "What's wrong?"

"_Go away_, you stupid jerk, leave me alone." Ryan's voice was all choked up and snotty.

"I don't even know how I got here!" protested Spencer. "How am I supposed to -"

That was when Ryan sat up in bed and pushed at Spencer. "Go _away_!"

Spencer stared at him. Then he twisted around and tried to stare at his shoulder where Ryan's hand had gone straight through it with a weird buzzy feeling.

When he was done making sure his shoulder was still there and more or less normal looking, he went back to staring at Ryan. Ryan was staring at him too. "What -" said Ryan. "What are you doing here, you - are you -" his face crumpled - "Spence, stop it, Spencer, go away -"

Spencer swallowed. An awful certainty was welling up, he didn't know where from but he couldn't get away from it. "Ryan," he said "I don't think I can."

Ryan went still for a long moment, and then buried his face in his hands and started to rock backwards and forwards, sobbing like he was going to die of it.

Spencer sat on the bed next to him without disturbing the sheets at all, wrapped his hands around his knees, and thought about crying too. At last Ryan rubbed his hand across his eyes and managed to sit up straight. "You stupid jerk," he said, his voice shaking, "you stupid _jerk_, don't you ever leave me. You don't ever get to leave."

"Okay," said Spencer. He was pretty sure he could do that. Then he said, just to check, "Did I die?"

Ryan glared at him. Spencer didn't bring it up again.  
_

At the end of practice Brendon hesitated just a second, looking at Ryan.

Drummer Dude was already on the way out the door. Drummer Dude was the latest guy they'd tried out on drums, and none of them were clicking just right, so Brendon had given up remembering their names. Brent paused as he was about to follow him, raising his eyebrows at Brendon and Brendon nodded. Everything was fine. He just wanted to try... well. Try _something_. "Ryan?" he said.

Ryan was staring fixedly at a spot of wall opposite, even though there was nothing there - Brendon glanced to check - yeah, nothing there. When Brendon spoke his head jerked around like he'd completely forgotten Brendon was there. "What?" he said, kind of peevishly. 'Peevish' was a word Brendon's mom used sometimes that perfectly described the way Ryan was when he wanted to be left alone to talk to himself.

Brendon knew he wasn't supposed to know that Ryan talked to himself, but you couldn't avoid knowing if you'd known him for long. It was one of the reasons they'd had so many Drummer Dudes. Either you got Ryan's particular brand of crazy and understood that he was awesome anyway, or you didn't. "You want to come hang out?" he suggested.

"No," said Ryan at once, and then added after a slightly-too-long pause, "Sorry, I - no." His eyes flickered, like he was looking at something behind Brendon.

Brendon nodded. "Okay. How about tomorrow?"

"It's Halloween tomorrow," said Ryan.

"I know," said Brendon patiently. "I thought maybe you could come over to my totally rockin' shithole apartment, and we could put on Nightmare Before Christmas or something, and pretend to be living the wild party life like the rockstars we're gonna be someday."

Ryan shrugged. "I don't do stuff on Halloween."

"Time for a change, then," Brendon said. "Come on, live a little."

Ryan flinched - flinched? Ryan was being weird even for Ryan - and then said, "_Fine_," in what Brendon felt was an unnecessarily vicious way.

"It's a -" not a date "- plan, then," said Brendon. "See you tomorrow!"  
_

Ryan fell asleep halfway through the movie.

Brendon glanced at him, and sighed, and grinned because he looked kind of cute with his hair falling over his face like that, and watched the rest of the movie anyway because it was _Nightmare Before Christmas_, duh. He went and got his one ratty blanket when it was done and put it on top of Ryan, and he switched off the TV and the DVD player and blew out the candle in the one pathetic jack-o-lantern in the corner which was the first one Brendon had ever carved completely by himself - because you couldn't have Halloween without _pumpkins_ \- and then stood in the middle of the mostly-bare floor, fidgeting, wishing for something to do. After a moment he went into the kitchen because at least then he could be moving, and stared out of the window into the dark street for a moment, and checked the cupboards though of course there was nothing in them. Ryan had managed to eat most of the candy Brendon had saved up for before he fell asleep, which was typical Ryan, and Brendon smiled to himself and wondered how the hell anyone could sleep with that much sugar in their system. Brendon certainly couldn't do it.

When he walked back into the other room, there was someone leaning over Ryan on the couch.

Brendon must have made a noise even though he didn't remember doing it, because the stranger startled and looked up at him. It was a boy, a teenage boy, probably about their age - tall and blue-eyed and wearing faded, nondescript clothes, still a bit of baby softness to his face and belly, hair somewhere between brownish and blondish flopping into his face in a haircut that was a bit like Ryan's, actually. Brendon gaped at him and the stranger looked back with several different expressions chasing each other over his face - surprise, amusement, confusion, slow shock - and just as Brendon finally managed to demand, "Who the hell are you?" the stranger blurted, "You can see me?"

The room was silent for a few seconds that felt way too long, and Brendon was just opening his mouth to ask what the hell kind of question that was when the other boy shook his head in a slow, amazed kind of way and said, "I'm Spencer."

"Who?" said Brendon.

Spencer rolled his eyes. "Brent definitely told you about me. And made you promise not to mention it to Ryan. I was there."

"_What?_" said Brendon.

Spencer folded his arms and leaned his hip against the arm of the couch. It didn't quite work at first, Brendon couldn't help noticing; Spencer ended up leaning a little way _into_ the couch, but he fixed it quickly. He didn't cast a shadow. Somewhere behind him, Ryan mumbled something in his sleep. "Let me jog your memory," Spencer said. "Ryan Ross. Bit of a freak, but not a bad guy. Talks to himself. Had this friend -"

"- _Spencer_ -" said Brendon, remembering -

"- who got hit by a car when they were ten."

"You don't look ten," said Brendon, because it was the first thing that came into his head.

Spencer shrugged.

"So are you... here to visit him, or something?" said Brendon. He felt wildly unprepared for this encounter. A religious upbringing really ought to have given him a better idea of how to handle these things. "Um, he's okay, you know. He's fine. I guess I could wake him up?"

"I know he's okay," said Spencer. "I'm not _visiting_," and Brendon remembered _I was there_ which Spencer had said just a second ago, and because he wasn't actually stupid he got it at once. Ryan talked to himself. Ryan smiled when no one had made a joke. Ryan stared at the empty air sometimes. Ryan was -

"...you're always there," Brendon said.

Spencer ran a hand through his hair. He seemed to feel kind of awkward about it. "Yeah," he said. "I mean. It wasn't my idea." He glared at Brendon. "I keep telling him he needs to be more normal and get more friends and things. I know it's not good for him to do this shit. I told him he ought to come over here, didn't I?"

Brendon remembered Ryan's weirdly pissed-off _fine_ and realized he'd been missing about a third of that conversation. Maybe that wasn't the only conversation he'd been missing bits of.

" - I mean, what do I know," Spencer was saying, and Brendon suspected he'd missed a bit more right then, "I'm just his best friend, I'm not his _therapist_, not that he has a therapist, though maybe he needs one, fuck, how would I know? For a while I thought I was maybe just a really complicated invisible friend he'd come up with somehow and not a ghost at all, except apparently you can see me now so I guess I _am_ a ghost, and -" he looked at Brendon - "I don't really know what to do sometimes, you know?"

"Uh, yeah," said Brendon. "I guess I know how that is." He knew what it was like to worry about Ryan. At least sometimes he had things to do _other_ than worry about Ryan; for this guy it seemed to be a full-time job.

Spencer gave him a relieved smile. "Right. Um."

"How come I can see you?" asked Brendon.

Spencer bit his lip. "Sometimes people can. On Halloween." He paused and then added, "One year we went - I mean, Ryan went over to - I mean - well, it scared my mom. So now we don't go anywhere." His voice was steady, but Brendon stared at him and imagined going home to find his mom _scared_ of him and -

"Shit, I'm sorry," he said.

Spencer ducked his head so Brendon couldn't see his eyes. "Whatever," he said. "Hazards of the ghost trade." He sat down on the arm of the couch where Ryan was still sleeping - Brendon noticed that he had to correct again when he sat _through_ the couch instead of on it - and nodded at Brendon. "We weren't expecting you to be able to see," he said. "I mean, Ryan didn't think you would, you're not a relative or anything."

"Does it bother you?" said Brendon, and then bit his lip wishing he hadn't said it. What if it did? What if Ryan's dead best friend who'd - shit, who'd been watching everything all along - didn't like him and now Brendon had to know there was a ghost silently and invisibly judging him every time he turned around?

Spencer just smiled, though. "Nah," he said. "You're - you're good for him, you know? You make him get out of his own head, you make him," he gestured around at the bare room which really was a shithole, enough of one that Brendon had thought about going home and begging his mom to forgive him more than once, "you make him do things," said Spencer, nodding at the jack o'lantern, and the DVD case on the floor by the TV, and the empty bowl of candy. "You make him live. It's good."

Brendon stepped a little closer, feeling nervous but also feeling kind of stupid just hovering at the other end of the room, and blurted, "Don't you get jealous?"

Spencer gave him a quick hard glance and Brendon thought he was going to have to explain what he meant, but then Spencer said, "Of him? Of, of the band? Of being alive?" He snorted. "All the fucking time."

Brendon took another step forward. "I, um. That sucks."

"Yeah," said Spencer.

They stared at each other. Brendon swallowed a couple of times. He couldn't think of what else to say. How do you make small talk with a ghost, anyway?

On the couch, Ryan shifted and made a soft _mmm_ noise. Brendon jumped. Spencer glanced back over his shoulder, taking a look at Ryan, and Brendon caught the edge of his smile - a soft smile, a _fond_ smile. "He's still asleep," Spencer said. "He makes noises when he sleeps sometimes. It's nothing. He's been tired a lot lately." He spoke authoritatively, like he was the world's greatest expert in all things Ryan Ross. Brendon had a weird half-jealous feeling, maybe because he'd been trying for _months_ to know Ryan better and just by looking at Spencer he could tell he'd gotten precisely nowhere, and maybe a little because Brendon didn't think anyone had ever wanted or tried to know Brendon himself that well.

"It's okay," Brendon said. "We can, um, hang out. Do stuff. I can make you some hot chocolate if you -" he stopped himself, _stupid stupid_, but Spencer was snickering. "Sorry!" said Brendon. He was probably getting red. Brendon always got flushed when he was embarrassed and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it.

Spencer was just grinning at him, though - properly grinning, and he had this _smile_. Brendon was used to waiting for Ryan's smiles and hoarding his memories of them - Ryan's smiles were rare, and Ryan's-smiles-aimed-at-Brendon were rarer, and they made Brendon's pulse speed up and gave him this weird paralyzed feeling in his chest like he didn't know what to do. Spencer's smile wasn't like that. Spencer's smile just made him feel warm, made him want to smile back - so he did, and then he made a stupid face in case that was too dorky.

Spencer laughed, though. "Hot chocolate's kind of pointless, but I wouldn't mind hanging out," he said. "I don't get to talk to people who aren't Ryan a whole lot."  
_

Spencer was pretty awesome.

Brendon spent about five more minutes being jealous of him - because clearly _no one_ was ever going to beat 'the guy who got killed and didn't let it stop him' in the Ryan Ross Friend Sweepstakes, so obviously Brendon's attempt to make Ryan _his_ best friend was doomed - before forgetting about it when Spencer started making fun of the Drummer Dudes. Both of them were howling with laughter after Brendon did an impression of Drummer Dude Timothy's elbow thing that even Brendon, who was honestly a fairly shitty drummer, knew was ridiculous, and then Spencer topped it with a pitch-perfect imitation of Drummer Dude Mick's prissy little bitchfit when he walked out on them. (Finally, Brendon understood why Ryan had been so giggly when it happened. "I was standing right behind him the whole time," Spencer confided, "making bunny ears.")

Ryan slept right through both of them cracking up, and stayed asleep when Brendon put the Nightmare Before Christmas back on, fast-forwarding through the boring parts so they could watch the songs. He was stretched out on the couch, taking up all available space, so Spencer and Brendon sat on the floor, side by side, not quite touching. Spencer said Moulin Rouge was better. Brendon countered that Moulin Rouge was a vile mishmash of the greatest showtunes of the last fifty years and not really a musical at all. Spencer laughed at him. It was _great._

Brendon could almost forget that the guy he was sitting with and laughing with and chatting with was a ghost, and that Brendon probably wouldn't even be able to see him tomorrow. Tomorrow wasn't far away, either. Brendon was depressingly conscious of the weight of his watch on his wrist, which said it was only a couple of hours until midnight and then Halloween would be over and so, probably, would this. Brendon would go back to having two friends in the whole world, instead of three, and now he'd _know_ that there was someone missing.

It would suck.

"I don't want to not see you anymore," he said to Spencer when the movie shut off, because Brendon had no brain-to-mouth filter at all, apparently. "It's going to suck."

Spencer half-shrugged, but he looked a bit sad. "Halloween happens every year," he offered.

"That's a whole year, though!" Brendon pulled a face. "You'll still be there, right?"

"Ryan can talk to me for you," said Spencer. He cheered up a little, grinning at Brendon. "Like passing notes in class, or something."

"A class that goes on forever," said Brendon, ignoring the fact that he'd never passed a note in class in his life because he'd never had anyone to pass them to. "_Seriously_. You're too cool to only talk to once a year."

"I'm sorry," said Spencer. "You're cool too, you know."

Brendon snorted automatically, but he couldn't stop himself from smiling. He wasn't cool at all. Spencer had to know he wasn't cool. But it was good to feel like someone thought he was. "Hey," he said, reaching out without thinking - because that was what Brendon did, he touched people, he _hugged_ people, and it was at times like this he missed his family because the band was good, the band was great, but there were far fewer hugs to be had out of them -

Spencer flinched when Brendon's hand touched his wrist. Then he stared. Brendon stared too. Spencer's wrist had felt weird under his fingertips, buzzy and faint and not quite like skin, but it had felt _there_. "I thought -" he said, just as Spencer said, "Did you just -"

Brendon reached out again. This time he kept his fingertips against Spencer's wrist for a few careful seconds while both of them stared down at his hand. The buzzy feeling was still there, like Spencer's skin had an electric charge or something. Brendon slowly closed his fingers around Spencer's wrist. Spencer made a weird little sound.

Brendon looked up quickly and let go. "What?" he said.

"Ryan can't touch me," said Spencer. When Brendon just stared at him, he repeated, "Ryan can't."

"I - oh," said Brendon, and tried to imagine how that would feel, not to _touch_ anyone for years and years.

Spencer kept staring at him.

"What?" said Brendon.

"Would you -" said Spencer, and then he apparently gave up on talking and just reached out. Brendon got the idea quickly and hauled him close, into a hug. It was a weird hug. It wasn't warm and the electric-shock feeling was still there. But Brendon was aware of _weight_, of _presence_, of _something_, and Spencer tucked his face into the crook of Brendon's neck and muttered, "Thanks."

"No problem," said Brendon in an almost-whisper. It felt like the moment deserved whispering, somehow. He'd gotten twisted around somehow, so that he was looking at the couch over the top of Spencer's head, and Ryan was still asleep on it. This had been the weirdest evening of Brendon's life and he'd slept straight through it. Brendon almost laughed, except it wasn't really funny, and then Spencer's arms tightened around him.

"I wouldn't mind," he said into Brendon's shoulder. "You should."

"What?" said Brendon. His first thought was - but Spencer _couldn't_ know, no one knew that -

"I know - _we_ know - how you, um. About him," Spencer said, still muffled. Brendon shut his eyes and tightened the hug and tried to pretend to himself that he wasn't listening. "You should."

"But I -"

Spencer peeled himself away from the hug reluctantly, like he couldn't bear to lose it, and met Brendon's eyes. "You know what I'm talking about," he said insistently. "I mean it."

Brendon licked his lips nervously. "Ryan doesn't want me." He wasn't that good at picking up on context clues, but he was pretty sure of that.

"Does," Spencer contradicted him at once. "He doesn't like being vulnerable, is all. And there's me." He didn't bother explaining what he meant, but Brendon got it anyway: if even Brendon had picked up on Ryan acting weird and talking to himself sometimes, it would be even more obvious to someone who was actually... _with_ him. "But now you know," Spencer said. "So."

They still hadn't disentangled from the hug all the way. Brendon stared at Spencer, his hands still resting on Spencer's back. Spencer stared back at him, his hair falling into his eyes, and Brendon saw him swallow, which sent his mind off on a weird tangent about whether ghosts needed to swallow and if so why, and he was still thinking about that when Spencer leaned in very, very carefully and kissed him on the mouth. The touch of Spencer's lips gave Brendon the same weird shocky, buzzy feeling that touching Spencer's skin had, and when Spencer pulled away again, the feeling didn't go anywhere.

"Uh," said Spencer nervously. "So when he wakes up. You should - you should do that."

They stared at each other. On Brendon's wrist, his watch counted down the minutes to midnight.  
_

Spencer remembered it like this: Ryan was sixteen and Brendon hesitated in the doorway after practice. His eyes flickered, like he was looking for something, and Spencer knew it was him. Brendon didn't see him, of course, but Spencer still found himself going still and hopeful, just in case. It was stupid. Ryan shot him a sideways look.

Spencer nodded at Brendon and said, "Go on, go for it," and then headed for the door. He couldn't get very far away from Ryan but he could put a wall between them, and Ryan would probably appreciate the privacy. And of course the best thing about the ghost thing was that Ryan couldn't argue out loud when there were other people about in case he sounded insane. More insane than usual, anyway.

Spencer had never quite decided on the worst thing about the ghost thing. Since Halloween he'd been able to think of a lot more possibilities.

So he brushed past Brendon in the doorway and Brendon shivered even though he couldn't know Spencer was there, and Ryan said, "Wait!" out loud, and Spencer stopped where he was, and then Brendon squared his shoulders and stepped forward to kiss Ryan. That was probably the point at which Spencer should have gotten out of there somehow. Instead he stared. He didn't really mean to, but he still watched Brendon tilt his head up a little because Ryan was taller and put his fingers under Ryan's jaw, and he watched Ryan stiffen and then relax, and he watched the way Brendon's eyes closed and the way Ryan's hands came up to rest on Brendon's waist, and -

_Fuck_, it wasn't fair.

Both of them jumped, and Spencer realized he'd said it out loud and Ryan was staring at him and Spencer supposed what he was thinking was written all over his face. Ryan's mouth was a little open and wet and his eyes were wide. "Don't worry about it," Spencer said. He'd spent a lot of time saying that to Ryan over the last few years. Brendon twisted around, stepping away from Ryan - though he still had a hand on Ryan's arm - and blinked.

And then he blinked again, and gaped, and rubbed his eyes, and then he said, "_Spencer?_"

Ryan switched his stare to Brendon. "How do you know -" he snapped.

"I thought I dreamed it," Brendon said. "I thought there was no way it was real."

"You can see me," Spencer said, not quite believing it.

"How -" said Ryan, and then, "When -" and then "_Halloween_," and he glared at Spencer accusingly.

"I didn't think you'd care," Spencer said, which was a complete lie. He'd known Ryan would want to know. Just - just for once, he'd wanted to have something that Ryan didn't know about.

Ryan opened his mouth to argue and then stopped, and Spencer could see him getting it. He seemed to realize then that Brendon was still holding onto his arm, and he tugged it away, reddening. Brendon bit his lip - Spencer watched the way it reddened a little under his teeth, feeling stupid and hopeless - and then seemed to reached a decision. He grabbed Ryan's hand and held out his other hand to Spencer.

Ryan began to dissuade him but Brendon just shook his head. "It's okay," he insisted. "It'll work. _Trust_ me."

Spencer still remembered how it had felt to hold someone, to be held, clinging to Brendon next to the couch while Ryan slept.

"I just think," said Brendon, "that if, if I can see him when I'm with you, maybe -" he waggled his hand at Spencer until Spencer hesitantly reached out and took it, and _yes_, yes it still worked, he could still close his hand around Brendon's, still feel him - "maybe," Brendon repeated, "maybe you can touch him when you're with me."

Spencer met Ryan's eyes. He thought about the first time they'd tried to touch, when Ryan's hand had passed right through him. He thought about the quiet evening when they were thirteen, when Ryan had muttered, "There's nothing, just nothing, it's like you're not even there." Brendon's grip around his wrist was warm, and Spencer hadn't even realized he was starting to forget what warm felt like.

Ryan's hand when it took his was warm too. It was as easy as that. They all three stood there in a circle holding hands and it should have been really, really lame but Spencer stared at their feet all in a circle and couldn't stop smiling, not even when Ryan said, "Spence," and squeezed his hand before he leaned in for a cautious kiss.

"It works, right?" said Brendon. "It works?" and then, "Hey, my turn," and he pushed Ryan away so he could kiss Spencer too. "Missed you," he said against Spencer's mouth.

"You only met him once," grumbled Ryan.

"It was an amazing once, Ross," said Brendon. "It was epic. And you slept right through it."

"Snoring," agreed Spencer.

"Shut up," said Ryan, but his face was flushed in the way that meant he was happy.


End file.
